RFE/RL – Russian Bank Selling Armenian Mining Giant

VTB had taken over the Teghut company after its previous owner’s failure to repay a $400 million loan provided by the bank’s Armenian subsidiary. According to an Armenian state registry, the bank now owns almost 50 percent of the company exploiting the country’s second largest copper and molybdenum deposit.

The VTB chairman, Andrei Kostin, spoke on Wednesday of the “final stages” of the sale. He gave no details of the deal which has to be approved by Armenia’s anti-trust regulator.

Sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the likely buyer of the stake is Konstantin Sokolov, a Russian-born U.S. entrepreneur, or companies linked to him. Sokolov is already one of the two co-owners of the parent company of Viva Armenia, one of the country’s three mobile phone operators.

Production operations at Teghut’s eponymous open-pit mine in the northern Lori province ground to a halt in March 2022 after VTB and other major Russian banks were sanctioned by the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company employed more than 1,000 people at the time. It resumed the mining operations a year later.

Teghut was 22nd on the Armenian State Revenue Committee’s list of the largest corporate taxpayers last year, with 14.4 billion drams ($38 million) in various taxes contributed to the state budget. It had paid a similar amount of taxes in 2021.

The company announced late last month the appointment of its new Russian chief executive, Sergei Nerchuev. The latter combines the job with management of a diamond mining company in northern Russia. It is not yet clear whether Nerchuev’s appointment is connected with the impending sale of the VTB stake.

Armenia’s largest metallurgical enterprise, the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) is mostly owned by entities linked to Russian billionaire Roman Trotsenko. The company employing some 4,600 people paid over 52 billion drams ($139 million) in taxes in 2025.

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